


American Gothic

by blackmare, Nightdog_Barks, pwcorgigirl



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst and Humor, Friendship, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, House/Wilson UST - Freeform, Male Friendship, Riververse, Road Trips, Storms, Weather, Wilson Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 05:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmare/pseuds/blackmare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pwcorgigirl/pseuds/pwcorgigirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halloween comes early for House and Wilson when they seek shelter from a storm.  This part is 5,666 words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Title:** American Gothic  
 **Author:** [](http://nightdog-barks.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**nightdog_barks**](http://nightdog-barks.dreamwidth.org/) , [](http://third-owl.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**third_owl**](http://third-owl.dreamwidth.org/) , and [](http://pwcorgigirl.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**pwcorgigirl**](http://pwcorgigirl.dreamwidth.org/)  
 **Characters:** House, Wilson  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Warnings:** No  
 **Spoilers:** Yes, for the Season 8 series finale arc.  
 **Summary:** Halloween comes early for House and Wilson when they seek shelter from a storm. This part is 5,666 words.  
 **Disclaimer:** Don't own 'em. Never will.  
 **Author Notes:** This is set in [the Riververse](http://nightdog-barks.dreamwidth.org/1643774.html) \-- a ficverse set after the end of Season 8 and in which House and Wilson's road trip has continued longer than either of them would've ever thought. This fic takes place a month or so after the events of [_Will It Go Round in Circles_](http://nightdog-barks.dreamwidth.org/1678517.html). The cut-text is from Ray Bradbury's short story _Homecoming_. The second half of the story will be posted tomorrow night.  
 **Beta:** Our intrepid First Readers, with especial thanks to [](http://srsly-yes.livejournal.com/profile)[**srsly_yes**](http://srsly-yes.livejournal.com/) and [](http://joe-pike-junior.livejournal.com/profile)[**joe_pike_junior**](http://joe-pike-junior.livejournal.com/).

_**American Gothic** _

 

It's about to start raining. It's about to start raining, and the promise of the relief it will bring from the hundred-degree heat would make House happy under other circumstances, such as if he weren't on a motorcycle. The soft grey mists of San Francisco are a distant memory -- riding in the rain is like being shot to death by a bug-sized army of pellet-gun commandos. Who shoot ice pellets. No matter that you were nearing heatstroke a few minutes ago; windchill conquers all.

Wilson has also learned this, and when House gives him the nod, he nods back. They are now on the lookout for shelter.

They'll have to look for a while out here in the dust bowl. No overpasses. No hotels. No gas stations, no restaurants, not even a tree for Toto to pee on in this part of Kansas. Or are they in Nebraska? House doesn't know; he doesn't remember seeing a state-border sign and under the circumstances he supposes it doesn't matter. A few rusted-out tractor husks suggest that this land was farmed, once. They'll either luck out, and find someone's old barn or something, or they won't. If it gets bad enough, and it might, he'd even settle for an ancient outhouse.

What House actually hopes for isn't the barn itself, much less a one-holer, but a nice big root cellar dug deep in the ground. Wilson may not have noticed yet, but the sky behind them is faintly green, the clouds roiling and muttering with thunder.

Right on cue, Wilson looks at him again, glances at the sky, and opens up the throttle. They can't outrun the storm, but they can damn sure speed up the hunt for safety.

* * *

The line of trees catches their attention from a long way off. Dark grey-green in the endless sea of grass, another relic of the days when this was farmland, before the money or the water or both dried up.

The windbreak forms a screen of tall weeds, leaves, and trunks. With all that, and the dust flying ahead of the storm's downdraft, they don't see the house until they've overshot it and have to turn back. A gravel driveway, the pebbles scattered so that the path is mostly raw dirt now, leads up to a patch of bare ground sheltered by the tattered shell of a garage. It's missing most of its shingles and part of the back wall, but it'll provide some cover for the bikes. As for the house ...

Perfect, House thinks. Everything's still standing -- two floors, an attic; there's got to be a basement. And he knows at a glance that nobody's home. Nobody's been home for a long, long time.

* * *

They've gotten in with no problem at all, if you don't count Wilson bleeding all over everything as a problem, which House does not.

He'd insisted on standing at the door with hat (helmet) in hand like a suitor come to call. Knocking, and shouting hello.

"It's abandoned, you idiot," House said.

"Yes, but we're stopping here. If someone else already has, I'd like to know that now."

"Because the engine's still warm on that Buick." The Buick in question was sinking in a sea of grass, its windshield smashed out and its dash sprouting wheat. House guesses the last time the car's radio was on was to catch Truman announcing a police action in Korea. "I say the non-crippled guy gets to climb through the window."

"I'm not breaking a window," said Wilson. He'd have been doing the full hands-on-hips thing, but his helmet was in one hand and his phone in the other, and he was scowling at that more than at House.

"Bad news?"

"No news. No signal. Did I mention I'm not breaking a window?"

"Seriously? The flying monkeys are about to carry us to Oz, and you're fretting about property damage?"

"No, bodily damage. Is that one cracked open?"

"You fail as a criminal," House announced. "How do you ever expect to land on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list this way?"

Wilson didn't answer; he had set the helmet down and was jacking around with the window when the rain started to blow in sideways across the long prairie porch. "A little help here?"

House lifted his cane, thought first about breaking the window, second about Wilson's head, and finally opted for helping him shimmy the window from side to side to unstick the sash and wrestle it up as far as it would go before it stuck again, this time for good. Wilson sighed and started to wriggle through, but no sooner was he halfway into the living room than he jerked and hissed in pain.

"Nail," he grunted. "Poking out somewhere. Dammit." There were drops of blood on the sill, seeping through the dry-cracked white paint to the raw wood beneath. He squirmed the rest of the way through awkwardly, holding his right hand away from his body and out of the reach of any more lurking hazards. House looked at the red-splotched sill and thought of Rorschach blots while he waited for Wilson to open the front door, and as he crossed the threshold he'd looked back at the listing wood stairs up to the porch.

They were already slick with rain.

* * *

The house looks sturdy enough on the inside, unlike the porch steps. Wilson's hand is still bleeding; must've been a pretty sharp nail. House isn't too concerned, though; he knows Wilson's tetanus booster is up to date.

Wilson puts his helmet on the dusty mantel in the front room and cradles one bloodied hand with the other. He's dripped a spoor of red drops in an uneven trail, from the front porch where they shimmied open the window to the front room where they're standing now. Drips everywhere except the entryway where he let House in, and that's only because of the entryway rug, a long, skinny affair in a hideous, faded maroon paisley that House is certain he last saw in Schuykill Haven, P.A., in his Great-Aunt Myrna's creaky old Victorian.

"I have to go get the saddlebags, don't I?" The weary way Wilson says it, you'd think he was Sisyphus, back at the bottom of the hill.

"Only if you want the first-aid kit," House replies. Wilson can be a metaphor for futility on his own damn time. As if reading House's mind, Wilson sighs and heads back out.

* * *

"House, c'mere," Wilson says. He's dropped the saddlebags to the floor, he's dripping with rain and blood, and he's fishing things out of their tiny first-aid kit. He stands as House approaches, reaching for the stricken right hand.

Next thing House knows, Wilson's using their scalpel ("Don't leave home without it," House had said) to slice a long strip off the hem of House's t-shirt. House stands there stunned for a moment; this was not at all what he thought was about to happen.

"Yours is dry," Wilson says, "and we're out of gauze. Gimme a hand."

"Wrap it around and hold onto the end and you'll be okay for now. We can do a real-doctor job after we've figured out how close we are to Ragnarök-on-the-Plains."

"Hnh?" Wilson's got a twist of blue t-shirt between his teeth; his jaw muscles are tensed and he can't answer properly.

"The _radio_ ," House says. "Where's the radio?"

By way of answer Wilson uses one booted toe to push a saddlebag in House's direction. "Insde pock't," he mumbles around the cloth.

"Fine," House grouses. "I have to do everything, as usual."

Wilson mumbles something else, unintelligible this time, but he's smiling, whatever it is.

The radio _isn't_ in an inside pocket, House notes with great satisfaction, but it is nestled in a black carrying-case, tucked in between two rolls of clean socks.

"First things first," House says, thumbing the little radio on. "Let's see if the Dodgers are playing a day game at Ebbets Field."

"It's a transistor, House, not a time machine," Wilson says, finally finished wrapping up his hand so that it looks like an amorphous blue paw. "How about a weather report?"

"We're in Kansas in mid-summer and the sky is green. We already know the weather report. What we need to know is what direction these supercells are moving." House dials the volume on the radio higher, the better to hear it over the barrage of rain on the old tin roof. "And we need to find a light source, and see if this place has a basement. Hold onto that first-aid kit -- we might run into more rabid nails."

"Or I might hurt you," Wilson mutters, but the kit disappears into his jacket.

The radio is stubbornly silent, all across the band.

"When's the last time you checked the batteries in this thing?"

"Put new ones in two days ago. It helps if you hit the 'on' button."

"Hit it yourself." House tosses the radio underhand; it thunks against Wilson's chest, smearing the dirty raindrops on the leather. What follows is a good minute of scowling, fumbling, shaking, and tweaking, all to no avail.

"That's ... weird." Finally Wilson gives up and forces House to wait _another_ two minutes as he tucks the useless radio back into the bag. His face squinches up into a horrible expression, and House has the deeply wonderful knowledge that Wilson's fingers have encountered that splat-ball entity, the toy Wilson himself bought in Loma Linda, bringing the curse upon his own head. The thing is blue, sparkly, and, out of its blister-pack, has the exact feel of a giant, cold, gelatinous booger -- something House takes an unholy delight in and which Wilson hates, so of course House _whaps!_ the ball at Wilson every chance he gets. Wilson takes his hand out of the bag, still looking like he wants to wipe it on something, but all he says is, "Come on. Let's find that basement."

* * *

The house is a rambling old thing, with sections built on over time by carpenters of increasingly lesser skills. The main entryway narrows to a hallway that goes straight through to the back of the house and hangs a right to open out in the kitchen. There are painted-over windows and odd-sized doors in unexpected places.

"No vandalism," Wilson says, looking out a dusty window with wavy old glass. "No broken windows, no graffiti."

"No decaying rubbers stuck to the floor," House says. "The real sign that a place is way off the map."

The door to the basement is in one of those weird, unexpected places. Not in the triangular piece of wall beneath the stairs, back by the kitchen, but in the hallway, between a bedroom and a bath, right where you'd expect to find a linen closet.

And it is fucking cold in that hallway, despite the fact that the window at the far end would've been letting sunshine in all day, and the quickly-weakening beam of Wilson's "travel-size" LED flashlight doesn't make it far down the basement stairs. They can see enough to know the steps are narrow, they are steep, and there's a wall on the left. _Only_ the left. Nothing on the right, not a rail, nothing but blackness. "Stairway to Hades," says House, but Wilson doesn't smile at the joke. Wilson doesn't even seem to be breathing; he's hunched over like he thinks something might jump out of the trees at him, if there were trees, and House's shoulders tighten in sympathetic tension.

The flashlight gives out completely, Wilson's apparent trance breaks, and they stand blinking at each other in the deep shadow of the hall. They can hear rain, see lightning flashes through the moth-eaten curtains on the windows, the usual noise and lightshow of a thunderstorm, but nothing more ominous yet. A half-dozen yokels-on-television are yammering away in House's head about it soundin' like a big ol' freight train when it comes, and House hopes that's true.

"Maybe," Wilson offers, and why does his voice sound so different in the dark? "Maybe they left a candle around here somewhere."

"Maybe they did," House says, and takes a step back, away from that cellar doorway. The tightness in his shoulders eases almost immediately, but he's still cold. "Let's look around. Call out if you see a Tin Man or a Scarecrow on the horizon." He's turning, ready to gimp back down the hallway, when Wilson touches his arm.

"We should stick together," Wilson says, and House opens his mouth, ready to snap something back about Cowardly Lions afraid of the dark, when that strange, stressed expression on Wilson's face stops him. They stand there for a minute as the thunder rumbles and growls outside, and then House nods.

"Okay," he says. "Lead on."

* * *

They've found four ladderback chairs, seat cushions covered in a dust-choked sateen cloth the color of toadstools, more rolls of that hideous paisley runner, and a twin-size mattress on the floor in the room with the discarded baby doll. A stack of crumbling newspapers dated August 1973. A bucket in the kitchen beneath the sink, threatening to rust through, but it hasn't yet, which is good, because the ugly truth is they're likely to be here a while and there is no way the plumbing works.

"Upstairs," Wilson says. "There might be a candle, or a lantern, or ... something."

Upstairs, naturally. On his leg, which is aching more with each round of lightning strikes. "If all we find is another dead flashlight, I'll beat you over the head with it."

Wilson turns around, looking him over for a moment, before silently going to the saddlebags and rummaging around. He returns with House's canteen and one of his own oxycodone pills, the ones he'd been prescribed just before he got scarlet fever. House could hug him.

"I'll go," Wilson says. "Faster that way. We might have to hit the basement any time."

And it's just at that moment that the basement door slams shut. House damn near drops his pill, then quickly washes it down into the safety of his stomach. "Like I'd let you have all the fun," he says, and he follows Wilson to the stairs leading up. His leg will just have to cope. At least there's a banister _and_ a wall.

* * *

Upstairs is like downstairs, only more so. Sickly greenish-yellow light seeps in through permanently unshuttered windows, so that the rooms littered with old furniture and stray bits of paper are filled with an unearthly glow.

These people left in a hurry, House thinks. They didn't bother taking all their things, or selling them, or giving them away, maybe because by then there were no takers left in this godforsaken land.

The master bathroom cabinet is full of old glass prescription bottles, their contents blurred around the edges and crumbling with age. Digitalis, Valium, something called Bellergal whose active components House can't make out in the deepening shadows. When lightning flashes outside, he thinks he sees scopolamine listed on the label, but then it, and the face of the girl he just saw in the medicine cabinet mirror, disappear in the darkness.

Wait a minute. _Girl?_

House blinks, and looks again. No, a shadow. Had to have been Wilson. "Wilson!"

"You find a candle?"

"No. Valium and a few pairs of bell-bottoms. If I had to wear that shit, I'd tranq myself, too. You were in here. Why didn't you look?"

"I was down the hall. They ... left their clothes?"

"Some. Closet's also got a suitcase, rod and reel, and a wedding dress. Don't get any ideas; _definitely_ not your size. Oh, and I call dibs on the recliner, unless something's living in the cushions, in which case it's all yours. You're sure you weren't in here?"

"I'd have remembered those curtains."

"Stand in the doorway."

"Why?"

"Just do it. I'm testing a theory." He goes back to the medicine cabinet, opens it, angles the mirror in every possible way. Nothing.

"What theory?"

"The theory that I'm having an interesting reaction to your oxycodone. Does this joint have an attic?"

Wilson steps aside silently. House gives the medicine cabinet mirror a few more swings, opening and closing, but it remains obstinately clear. No girl. No Wilson. No _shadow_ of Wilson. On the other hand ... no Kutner or Amber, so that's good.

"Fine," House mutters, and slaps the cabinet door shut.

* * *

The attic is sticky, and dusty, and hot, and its low ceiling follows the pitch of the roof, so they can only stand upright in the center of the room. The whirly-bird turbines on the roof are silent, broken and rusted to a standstill, so the air sits motionless, holding in the summer heat. There's about as much up here as on the other two floors -- a couple of folding chairs, a card table, the skeleton frame of an old bicycle. Perched on the card table are a pair of ornate bird cages, their wrought-iron bars rising to a curved dome, but when House looks closely, the cage floors are covered with a layer of fine grey ash.

On opposite walls there are shelves full of knickknacks -- House investigates one while Wilson rifles through the other.

House's shelf holds a row of cheap paperbacks, spines broken, the edges and corners of the pages soft and fuzzed and dogeared. Next to the books, a pink china pig grins up at him, its curly tail pressed tight against its plump body. A slot in its back betrays its purpose, and House picks it up and gives it a shake. Something rattles inside and he turns it over.

The cork plug disintegrates between his fingers; he swipes his palm on his jeans, holds his hand out and turns the pig right side up.

His reward is a few wheat pennies and another, smaller coin, which, when he holds it up in the dim light, reveals itself to be a worn Mercury dime.

House sets the pig back on the shelf and pockets the loose change.

"Always a class act, House," says Wilson. The rain's eased off so he's not shouting. "Raid the piggy bank while ignoring the candles right beside it." Wilson reaches into his pocket and produces a lighter. As in, cigarette lighter. It's one of those cheap plastic things, the kind they put beside the register at small-town drugstores next to the Juicy Fruit gum and the _Know Your Star Sign!_ booklets.

"You've had that this whole time?" House demands.

"What if I have?" Wilson says. "It's not like I could keep my thumb on this thing forever."

House wants to say there are other places Wilson might keep his thumb, but the main thing is that oncologists have no business carrying lighters around. "You don't smoke. I'd smell it on you."

"No, but you never know when you might need to destroy a little evidence. Candles, House. Grab one and let's get down from here before there's no 'here' anymore."

"Ain't heard no freight train comin' yet," House drawls. He's plucking books from the shelf beneath the candles and the pig. Yellowed volumes, their covers full of beautiful women being ravished by even prettier men who've forgotten to put their shirts on. Flower petals and long hair are swirling around in some kind of pastel-colored wind-tunnel. Hastily he shoves _Heiress to Scandal_ and _Passion's Sweet Captive_ inside his jacket, and feels a tiny rifle-barrel jabbing his finger as the books cram in on top of one of the toy soldiers he's been carrying around since Barstow.

"Deal with it, private," he mutters, but he uses the other pocket for the pair of homemade candles. He knows they're homemade because his mom was into that for a while. The crafty crafter in this house used two jelly jars and a souvenir glass from Wall Drug. He and Wilson have been there.

"House." Wilson has frozen in mid-flick of his Bic. "Shit. Grab one more trashy book and let's go!"

"No need to -- " freak out, House starts to say, but then he sees the thing Wilson's seeing, out the window. It's far away, but the sky is bright behind it and he knows that shape.

"Fuck," he says, and he's down the hall with Wilson right behind him. In the room they just left, he hears something shatter, like glass, but no way in hell is he going back to look.

Probably the damn pig hitting the floor.

* * *

Wilson's cheap little Bic is just enough light to help them get down the basement stairs unharmed. Safely underground, they light their two candles and brace themselves for whatever fresh horrors lie in wait down here.

There's nothing to brace for. The basement is ... a basement, a vaguely rectangular space following what must have been the original footprint of the house before the crazy builders -- House hesitates to call them _architects_ \-- started tacking on extra rooms. An alcove near the stairs marks the spot of a former coal chute or cold cellar.

It's dry, cool, and weirdly clean, even if the linoleum is curling up along the walls. There are file cabinets, the old metal kind. Some stacks of papers. High up on one wall there's a homemade wooden shelf with a few tools, a couple of old Tonka trucks, a hurricane lamp and a half-empty bottle of fuel oil with its cap rusted shut. It's as normal as the attic was bizarre. And then, in the corner near the ancient washer and dryer, they find the two big beanbag chairs, same era as the closet full of bell-bottoms, upstairs.

House is so relieved, he could cry. Either that or it's the leg pain. He and Wilson look at the chairs, at each other, and back toward the stairs, and he can see they've come to the same conclusion. That little alcove, enclosed on three sides, will be the safest spot, if they can ignore the ghosts of the cankered potatoes and pale turnips stored there over the years. With only two hands between them, they have to set their candles down so they can drag the beanbags over. House props them against the back wall and sinks gratefully into a cushioned seat, leaving Wilson to fetch their candles and the old lantern.

He wrenches open the oil jug, fills the old lantern, and manages to light the brittle wick from one of their candles. "Next patient," he says. Wilson's busy staring off into space, the way he does when he's thinking about whatever dumb thing he has blessedly decided not to share. "Come on, you're wasting billable hours."

Wilson snorts at him, but comes over and takes a seat. "I was hoping for a better doctor," he says, "but this clinic can't even pay its electric bill." He gives his hand over to House without protest.

To House's surprise, the wound -- a deep slice about an inch long, on the heel of Wilson's palm -- is still oozing a steady creep of blood. There's no swelling or redness, and Wilson doesn't have a fever or elevated heart rate or any other of the ominous symptoms of septicemia. Not that he would, this soon after the injury, but recent history has proven that disease progression in Wilson is not subject to the usual rules. He cleans it carefully, using extra alcohol and ignoring Wilson's muffled gasps, and when he's done he wraps it in another strip of blue cotton.

"You owe me a new t-shirt," he growls.

* * *

They've arranged themselves on the big old beanbag chairs in much the same way they've been doing on any ordinary night, in one bed or the other at their various hotels. The chairs are so old that their thick, pebbly vinyl has stiffened and doesn't even smell like vinyl anymore, but so far there have been no ruptures.

"Come on," House demands, looping his arm through Wilson's and pulling him, and his beanbag, closer. "Need the support on this side or my bag flattens out."

"Sounds like a personal problem," Wilson says, because this is what they do now: Move ever further into each other's space while giving each other crap about it.

Their jostling and nudging stops only because they're beginning to hear it. The big It, and damn if it doesn't sound just like a train.

They wedge themselves more tightly together, cursing as the ground starts to rumble. The noise grows, shaking the old house to its foundation, and rattles the tool shelf until it seems the bolts holding it to the wall will pop loose like hot rivets. They huddle, heads down and their arms around each other as the thing closes in, its roar drowning out all other sounds except the whistle, a high-pitched scream that seems to go on forever until finally it begins to fade. House can feel it, the whistle, in his bones, even after it's gone.

The thing leaves a dead silence in its wake. He and Wilson just sit there a while, probably because small talk would be stupid. They already know what happened and that they didn't die. The remaining questions can't be answered until they can safely go back up the stairs, and since the first tornado is often not the last, they're not in any hurry.

"Probably wasn't even the one we saw," House says. "We were down here, what? Twenty minutes, before it hit? That's a long time for one to stay on the ground." House stretches his leg out and kneads the knots in the thigh. "News tomorrow ought to be interesting."

"Yeah." Wilson, rather than edging away now that the immediate threat is past, has stayed put with his arm around House's back, his bandaged hand on House's shoulder. "I hope no one got hurt."

"You try to go out there and find someone to save, and I'll kick your ass."

Wilson laughs, for the first time since they got here. "I'll settle for saving ourselves this time." He's still doing that weird thing, though. Looking around like he's waiting for ... the cops to bust in and arrest them for trespassing, or something. "I've never been through anything, uh, quite like this."

"Pulling all-nighters, surviving on junk food? Thought you went to med school."

And that seems to do the trick, getting Wilson's attention onto House instead of onto their current situation and whatever is making him so twitchy. They tell each other college stories -- the hardest course, the best pranks, which city has the best bars, Baltimore or Montreal? -- until both run out of things to tell and are making shit up to see what the other will believe.

It's at that point that Wilson gets up and grabs the lantern. "Where are you going?" House says.

"Want to make sure we still have bikes. And I don't know about you, but I'm starved, and all our junk food's in our bags, up there. Provided half the house didn't just get nuked."

And of course, now that Wilson's said it, House's stomach growls.

"Okay," he says. "It's your turn to tip the pizza guy anyway."

* * *

It's dark upstairs, darker than it was before. Rain is still coming down, and Wilson can see flashes of lightning in the distance. He ventures into the living room, where he can look out the dirt-filmed picture window, but it's impossible to see any details outside, and anyway the lantern just casts his own reflection in the glass.

He sure doesn't look like he used to.

Something's tickling his wrist -- damned place is probably crawling with bugs -- and he swipes at it with his free hand. His fingers come up blood-smeared, and he holds up his injured hand to see a thread of blood trickling down his forearm from the sodden blue bandage.

The cut must have been deeper than he thought. It doesn't hurt much, especially not for the amount of blood coming from it.

The droplets don't make a sound as they fall on the dry planks under his feet. _Trail of breadcrumbs_ , Wilson thinks, and he looks around, but there's no telltale drips behind him, nothing to indicate he's even here. He bends down and holds the lantern close -- another droplet falls, a gust of wind lashes rain against a window, and for a split-second he doesn't need the lantern as a bolt of lightning illuminates the room in a brilliant white flash.

 _One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand_ , and the droplet's gone, seeped into the wood, right through the layer of varnish as the thunder rolls. Every hair on Wilson's neck is standing straight up.

 _You're feeding the house_ , an entirely-too-calm voice inside his head observes, and Wilson shoves that voice away, fast, because that voice has _no business_ being here, saying crazy shit like that. It was a trick of the light, nothing else.

He needs to pick up the bags, that's it. But first ...

There's a wad of clean paper napkins in his jeans pocket from the last time they stopped to eat at a roadside diner. Wilson sets the lantern down on the floor and stuffs them under the makeshift bandage. It'll do until he can get back to House.

He goes back to the entryway and manages, after a fashion, to sling the tail bag with their snacks and water in it over one shoulder.

"Wilson!"

Wilson blows out a soft breath as he stands up and adjusts the bag's strap.

"Hey! Wilson!"

"Damn it, House," Wilson mumbles, and then, louder, "I'm coming! Just a minute!"

"Willlssonnn," House sings out, and oh, Wilson knows that _taunting_ tone only too well. _Bastard._

"House, I -- " Wilson begins, then stops.

The voice isn't coming from downstairs.

Wilson swears again. How the _hell_ did House get past him and upstairs without Wilson seeing?

 _"Wilson,"_ the voice says, softly this time, and Wilson wheels around, holding the lantern so it lights the stairs leading up.

There's no one there.

Well, _of course_ there's no one there, Wilson thinks. There's no one there at all.

"Oh, _Wil_ son," the voice croons, and this time it's _definitely_ coming from upstairs.

Wilson hoists the lantern higher, and makes himself look away from the light, into the corners, into the shadows, the right angles where the wall meets the weathered, scuffed floorboards. A hidden passage, that has to be it. Something behind a bookcase, activated by a sconce, and isn't that a funny word, _sconce?_ Nobody ever uses --

"Wilson," the voice says, and there's a hitch at the end, Wilson can hear it, like someone stifling ... a laugh.

"House?" Wilson's feet move by instinct, closer to the steps. The voice is silent. " _House?_ Damn it, House, this isn't funny!"

"Wilson," and now the voice has a pleading tone, and "help me," the voice says, or at least that's what Wilson _thinks_ it says, because the voice is weakening.

 _Son of a bitch._ Whatever shit House is pulling, there's a chance he hurt himself in the process; he is House, after all. Wilson starts up the stairs. If he gets up there and House is okay?

Wilson is going to fucking _kill_ him.

* * *

In the basement, House is listening to music.

Not on his iPod, not on one of their phones. There's music coming from somewhere, though, faint but clear, and it sounds awfully like a swing band, one of the groups that criss-crossed the country in the 1930s and '40s. It sounds like they're playing "String of Pearls," or maybe it's "Moonlight Serenade" -- House always did get the two mixed up.

Great, House thinks. Someone must be in a car outside, out here to check on the place now that the worst of the storm has passed. Radio on, an NPR station doing a "Greatest Generation" pledge drive, car windows down, and just wait, there'll be footsteps on the porch any second now. He gets up and moves to the tiny half-windows that face the driveway, ready to see a set of headlights and a shadowy, shotgun-toting figure, but what he can actually see is: nothing. Blackness and more blackness, and when he holds his candle to the filthy glass, he can make out only dirt and the vague shapes of dead weeds.

If there's a car, and a visitor, he won't know until it's too late. Maybe it's Wilson; maybe Wilson finally got the damn radio to work, and left it at the top of the stairs just to mess with House's mind. An "A" for his creativity, if so, but then there's the other question.

Where the hell is Wilson?

* * *

The voice gets louder, then softer, then loud again, but Wilson can't make out any of the words beyond the occasional hissed _"Wilson!"_ as he climbs, past the second floor, higher --

He knocks on the frame of the attic door. "Hello?" he tries. And "hello?" again. "I'm coming in! House, this had better be good!"

The first thing he sees in the attic is the shattered china pig, pink and white shards of porcelain scattered on the floor. Beside the broken pieces, children's spelling blocks in a jumble, except they're not a jumble, not really ...

The faded gray R on the rhinoceros block is facing upwards, as is the blue U topped with an umbrella. "House, did you ... " Wilson starts to ask, and a slight movement he catches at the edge of his vision stops him.

The N block with the crescent moon and the stars -- Night? -- has flipped to the letter side. The blocks now spell out RUN.

 _No_ , Wilson thinks. _No_. He takes a step back, all the way back thirty years in half a second. He tears his eyes away from the blocks; the corners of the attic room are dark and the lantern flame casts a feeble light. Whoever's here, it isn't House.

And that's when someone touches him on the shoulder.

************ 

_To be continued ..._


	2. Chapter 2

_**Part Two** _

 

House would recognize that scream anywhere. Same one he heard when he was cannonballing five floors down into a hotel pool like the damn fool he was. Instantly he's on his feet, scrambling for the stairs, but as it turns out there's no need for him to go anywhere. The basement door flies open, slamming against the wall so hard it bounces back, and there's Wilson, almost tumbling down the steps, gulping for air, his eyes wild.

_"House,"_ Wilson gasps out. " _God_ , House -- " and then he stops and takes a deep breath. He sets the lantern on the floor and looks searchingly into House's eyes.

"House," he says. "You're ... talk to me, House. Talk to me?"

"Okay?" House says carefully, not quite sure what the right answer is here, but apparently that's enough, and before House can think of anything else to say, he's enveloped in a Wilson bear-hug.

"Um," House says. Wilson doesn't let go. _"Um,"_ House says, a little more forcefully, and then, "What happened up there? You were screaming like a little girl," and that does the trick.

"I didn't scream!" Wilson insists, and damn it, now that Wilson has let him go, House misses the warmth.

"I heard you," House says, "and it was a scream. Where the hell were you, anyway?"

"Attic. I may have ... shouted," Wilson allows, and House knows that's as far as he'll go. "As for what happened ... " He steps back and shrugs off the bag he's carrying. "The, uh ... spiders came out, while we were down here." He's doing that thing House recognizes very well: fumbling around for something, anything that House might believe. House decides to let him flounder. "Lots of spiders. _Big_ spiders. I walked into a web. I, I have a phobia, okay?"

"What you have is a total inability to lie when you're on the spot." House retrieves the lamp from the floor, holds it aloft, and studies his face carefully. "There's not a strand of silk on you. You've been twitchy ever since we looked down the basement stairs -- the same way you were wound up tight in that mine shaft in Fort Bumfuck, California."

"Calico Town," Wilson says.

"What?"

"It was called Calico Town," Wilson says. "Outside Barstow."

House would throw up his hands if he weren't holding the goddamn lamp. "I don't care what it was called!" he says. "Then, I thought it was caffeine. Now, I know it's not. If you do have a phobia, spiders aren't it. We got stuck in that elevator in Jacksonville, and you didn't freak, so 'enclosed spaces' is out. You've happily gone camping under a pitch black sky, so cross off 'lack of light.' I'd diagnose basement-related PTSD, but it's clearly not basement-specific, which leaves me no choice but to ask my lying weasel patient _what the hell happened_."

Wilson is staring at the bag at his feet.

"I don't mean just now. I mean before. Whenever it was."

Wilson looks up, finally, but he keeps moving his eyes around the basement, like he's waiting for something to come creeping out of the bricks. "It was stupid, House. This whole thing is stupid."

"Stupid beats boring," House says, and he might be winning, because Wilson blinks, takes a breath, and picks up the bag again. Their food, such as it is, is inside. "So," House continues, "wanna tell me about it over dinner?"

* * *

Wilson doesn't want to tell him, but he can't figure out why not. Well, other than the obvious reason, which is that House will mock him into oblivion, but that's always been a given. He rummages through the packs and thinks about baggage. What he's afraid of, after all these years. He looks up to find House watching him. Even in the flickering light of candles and lantern, that familiar, sharply curious expression is clear.

"Next time, I buy the snacks," Wilson says. He's hoping, if he gripes enough, he'll seem normal again and House won't mention the way Wilson's sitting, pressed close against his side. He pulls a crushed, deflated cellophane bag out and holds it to the light. "Seriously? Who the hell still eats Funyuns?"

"You, and then you'll conveniently blame the aftereffects on me. Find the Moon Pies yet?"

"It was a hundred degrees out there. I'm not sure I _want_ to find the Moon Pies."

"They're on top of the apples. You can hand me one of those now, if you're going to be a bummer and insist on dinner before dessert." House leans in, looks a little closer. "I'd prefer mine without blood on it."

"What?" Wilson looks at his hand. The makeshift bandage has soaked through again and dark streamers of blood are drying on his arm. "Ah. Yeah. My slow leak."

He holds out his hand for House to wrap another layer of t-shirt strips around it.

"You don't stop bleeding and I'll be able to wear this shirt to a job interview at Hooters," House grumbles.

"Fine, but I'm not paying for the implants. Oh, wait, you wouldn't need implants."

"Shut up and coagulate," House says, and while he must have been aiming for 'brusque and abrasive,' he doesn't quite make it, and Wilson can see him trying not to smile.

"Eat up. It's a holiday," Wilson says. "National Tornado Day. Celebrate it however you want." He finds the Moon Pie packets, much the worse for wear, and holds one up by its edge like he's got a dead rat by the tail. Better this than that disgusting splat-ball, though. House snatches the Pie gleefully. In no time there's melted chocolate on his fingers and lips and chin, and he's licking marshmallow goop off his thumb. The second squashed, melted Moon Pie is looking like a better idea all the time. Wilson peels it open carefully, although he no longer wears the kinds of clothes that a mess will ruin. House mumbles something that might be "go for it" and tips his head back in gooey delight. For a moment Wilson thinks he's going to do that horrible, childish, _"see food"_ thing, opening his mouth to display a gloppy melange of marshmallow and masticated chocolate cookie, but House doesn't, and to Wilson's surprise, he _misses it_. 

There's only one thing to do.

"I was sixteen," Wilson begins. "Which should tell you approximately how smart I was."

* * *

"I don't know if this is such a good idea," James said. The entrance to the Chief Oratam Cavern loomed before them, a dark mouth gaping behind the weeds and loose brush. If they were on the side that opened into the park, this would all be cleared away. It would be easy, and boring, and a ranger might catch them.

"Oh, come on, Jimmy." Jason put down the Pabst he'd been sipping as he drove them down here -- slipping it below window-level when another car cruised by. "Don't be such a pussy."

"I'm not a pussy, dipshit."

Jason grinned. "I know you're not," he said, and reached out and playfully punched James on his bicep. And that was why James would do pretty much anything Jason wanted. Because Jason didn't care what anyone thought of him, and he was almost eighteen and a senior, and he still liked James. "Look, we're not gonna get caught. The power company owns this end and there's never anyone down here. So come on. Let's have some fun."

And so they went, each with a backpack slung over one shoulder, to carry whatever they found. Arrowheads, James imagined. Sharks' teeth, maybe, bits of ancient pottery, spear-points, all these beautiful flint-knapped things waiting to be picked up.

"It'll be mostly on the floor of the cave," Jason said, "not stuck in the walls. So watch there." James kept his eyes on the ground as they walked in together, finding insect-trails and sparks of mica, a cigarette butt and a condom wrapper and the wave-patterns left by water that had run through and then dried. His flashlight beam hit on something shiny and dark, and he had just toed it up to reveal it as an ordinary rock when he looked up to say something to Jason, and ...

Jason wasn't there.

Wilson pointed his light ahead of him and turned around, and around again, and out of all the branch-offs from the main cavern, he couldn't see the one Jason must have taken. He'd lost the mouth of the cave, and the safety of daylight, and was near a sort of chamber, like an anteroom, with a low ceiling full of spiny, broken stalactites and what looked like three offshoot tunnels, and enough perfectly preserved footprints so that, when James stopped turning, he had no idea which prints were even his.

He was yelling for Jason when the beam of his flashlight turned from white, to yellow, to dull, dull orange; he could see no more than eighteen inches, then, in any direction.

_Damn it, Jason_ , he thought, trying to get pissed off instead of terrified. Jason and his good ideas. We'll stay together, he said. He'd laughed at James's idea that they ought to get a spool of kite-string, tie one end to a branch outside the cave, and unreel it going in. "I've been in there," Jason said. "It's cool, but it's not that complicated, and anyway, where are we gonna get the string?"

_"Hardware store, duh," House says. "You two weren't even wearing helmets, were you? Your friend was a moron."_

_"You want the story, or not?"_

_"Touchy, touchy."_

James stopped yelling and stood still. He forced himself to take some deep, calming breaths, tried to slow the thumping heart in his chest. He listened with all his might, straining to catch Jason's voice, Jason's laugh, the flap of Jason's sneakers in the thick dust, but there was nothing, nothing out there but a high-pitched squeaking which James assumed must be a bat.

"Jason?" James turned around again slowly, a full circle. Silence. Even the squeaking had faded away. "Jason? This isn't funny, man!" His mouth was so dry he couldn't work up enough saliva to spit. "Jason, _come on_. Come on, okay? Please?"

_"Jimmy!"_ a voice called, and James gasped with relief. He swung the flashlight in that direction, but the beam was too weak.

"Jimmy!" the voice called again. "Over here!" But where was here?

He took a tentative, sliding step forward.

The last of his light died. He waved his fingers in front of his face, and saw nothing at all.

_Breathe, don't cry, think_ , he told himself. _Breathe --_

A large, heavy hand closed around his arm, and he screamed and twisted away. Another set of fingers, smaller and colder, clutched at his hair, and then there were hands all over him. Pulling on his shirt, grabbing at his shoulders, snatching at his ankles as he tried to run. He fell, got up, saw a light and sprinted toward it -- watery and pale, maybe Jason's flashlight, or the blue of daylight coming in, but then it was gone and his foot hit a stalagmite.

James went to his knees in the dust.

The ground beneath him seemed to lurch and spin. He could hear himself screaming, panicking, and when he managed to stop, there were other voices. Distant, distorted fragments, like someone talking, way too far away on a short-wave radio, in a language he didn't understand.

Desperate, he scrambled back to his feet, looked upward, and there was Jason -- above him, a luminous round face floating in the darkness, up there where he had no right to be. And then it changed and James didn't know what the fuck it was, but it wasn't Jason anymore.

James ran, hands outstretched, swinging the dead flashlight ahead of him like a club. Ran straight into one wall after another, trying to get out, away from the hands, away from the disembodied face of his friend, running for his life with the voices of cave-things all around him. He had no way to know which direction he was going, out to daylight and safety, or into an unknown, unmapped crevasse.

He never knew how the hell he made it out alive.

* * *

"I found Jason in the Nova, huddled down in the seat with the doors locked. Face all scratched up, I guess from crashing so hard through the brush getting out of there. He was ... I've seen cadavers that weren't that pale."

"So what did the boogeyman do to _him?_ "

Wilson shakes his head. "I don't know. He didn't say and I didn't ask. He'd been crying, I'd been crying, we were guys in _high school_ , we were supposed to be cool and grown-up and we'd practically wet our pants. It would've been too weird. His parents were out of town that weekend, so we went back to his house and tried to forget about it. Watched racy stuff on cable we weren't supposed to watch. When it got dark, we raided all the dusty old bottles of Triple Sec and Cointreau and Blue Curaçao, sweet shit like that, down in the basement. Things nobody really wanted but they'd never thrown out. Didn't sleep until dawn, and we were still so drunk. I was hammered. First time I ever had more than a few sips of anything."

"You were both idiots."

"What, going into the cave unsupervised and not marking our trail? Yes, I think we established that part, House."

"You're _still_ an idiot. You were _drinking_ , on top of chemical intoxication from whatever toxic sludge the power company dumped in that cave. You'd been inhaling the Ghost of Regulatory Violations Past, with no EPA Angel to wave her magic Superfund wand."

Wilson blinks. "That's your explanation? Chief Oratam Cavern State Park was a _toxic waste site?_ "

"Makes _logical_ sense." House shrugs; he's filed the story away for future reference and is ready to move on. "Or you and your bud managed to freak each other out, there in the dark. Still, I'm surprised you didn't puke your guts out."

Wilson barks out a laugh. "Who says I didn't? Jason kept pouring more, and it's not like I knew when to stop. He said I was a fun drunk."

The kid was right, House thinks. Wilson is the funnest of fun drunks, not because he does anything cool but because, once you get enough alcohol into him, his inner dork comes out to play. Really play, like the innocent kid he would have been back then, and House finds himself jealous of Jason What's-his-face, with the absent parents and the car and the unspoiled young Jimmy.

"I'm seeing a pattern in your friendships," House announces.

"What?"

"Best bud who's a little older. Misfit who isn't even trying. Does stupid things and takes you along. Bad influence who gets you wasted. This doesn't sound familiar?"

"Oh." Wilson digs the very last Funyun bits out of the bag. "Yeah, I can see that. He was a good guy."

"A good guy." This was not the expected Wilson response.

"He was. It was a ... bad year, for me, and he was a pretty good friend. Thing is, he knew I was lost in there, but once he got out, he didn't go back. He'd have called for help, but he wasn't going back in after me."

"Smart kid."

"Yeah. Smarter than you." Wilson crumples the bag and tosses it aside. "Good thing stupid trumps boring."

"I'm never boring," House counters, trying to recover his conversational groove. "I even had the forethought to bring some entertainment."

"Entertainment? You have a phone with games, and a harmonica. Neither of which counts."

"They do so, but that's not what I meant. I am speaking of the classics of modern literature."

He watches while Wilson's brain takes a few seconds to make the leap back to ... an hour ago? Two? Is that all? -- and realize what House must mean. At Wilson's _You've got to be kidding me_ stare, House merely smiles. 

"You're gonna need your glasses," Wilson says.

* * *

"'Delia moaned eagerly as she felt the hot thrust of his marble-hard manroot at the gates of -- '"

Wilson sputters. Loudly. "It does not say that."

"Does so. Hopefully his condition's treatable. Now knock off the coitus interruptus."

"But my book's better." Wilson turns it so that the gold-embossed title catches the lamplight and starts to read. "'He pushed me down upon my belly among the rough woolen blankets, with one strong hand on my back and the other rucking my skirt up about my waist. His fingers slipped betwixt my legs, drawing out the wetness there before pressing into me again, in the one place I thought unfit for any touch.'"

House actually looks surprised. "Whoa. Is he about to -- "

"Oh yeah. 'He entered me first in the usual fashion, then drew back and followed in earnest that forbidden path his fingers had made.'" Wilson raises his voice to a falsetto and lays his hand across his forehead for effect. "'No,' I protested, 'tis not meet!' 'Tis better than the beating you deserve,' he growled. Soon he had -- '"

"His dick all the way up her ass. Why didn't anyone ever tell me what was in these books?"

"' -- filled me in that strange new way, and as he moved I cried out in amazed delight, spreading wide that he might sheathe himself fully within me. How many paths are there to sin, and how many roads to pleasure? I think Sir Charles must have known them all.'"

"Our heroine is one kinky, kinky girl," House says, and it might be Wilson's imagination or else House's eyes might have dilated a little more than they already were, in the dim lantern-light. "Not sure I can top that one."

"You could bottom." Wilson's mouth says it before his brain can put the brakes on, and then he's snickering and grinning like a high school kid, like he might have when it was him and Jason, only more so because he was miserable then and he's happy now, here in the basement with the tornadoes and no real food and House. Who is staring at him as if he's just ... abruptly grown an extra head or something. House's mouth is hanging half-open.

"We're going to burn these," House says, finally. "Next place we stay that has a fireplace or a grill. And roast smutty, smutty marshmallows."

"You burn yours. I'm keeping this one." And he is, even though he needs to stop these vague thoughts about that scene and why it was the one he chose to read to House. And whether he truly wants to know. "Have we got any more Moon Pies?"

* * *

Somehow, House is depressed to learn, they have become so boring that they are talking about the weather. Not the current weather, at least. Stories of the harshest and weirdest shit they've seen; of Wilson's mother's car being ruined when she put off the antifreeze and that crazy cold snap burst the radiator; of the lightning that hit his cabin that one year -- it was only one year -- when he was in the Boy Scouts; of the Florida Panhandle hurricane House and his mom survived, evacuating just minutes ahead of the storm surge that took out the roads.

"I was pretty calm about it, for an eight-year-old."

"You weren't freaked out knowing you were about to lose your home?"

"Military brat. Never felt like I had a home to lose. It was -- " He's about to say something like 'normal' or 'expected,' but he's just noticed ... something. A pair of somethings, and they look like eyes.

They are golden-orange and quite small, and they are shining out of a dark, dark corner, over past the washer and dryer. "Wilson," he says, and then realizes Wilson has seen it, too. Wilson is sitting very, very still.

"Rat," House guesses. Norway rat, roof rat, except this isn't the roof and it's in the _wall_ \-- and that's when the first set of eyes moves, a head bobbing, and another set appears. One eye, that vanishes, then another (or else the creature is blinking), and then two, faint and narrower, and then it moves again. And that's how they all are, the first two and the next six and the following dozen and oh, holy shit.

"That's a lot of fucking rats," Wilson whispers.

"Rats can have eight litters a year," House says, just as softly, "with up to twenty pups in a litter. They do a _lot_ of fucking."

Something talks back to him, but it isn't Wilson. The voice says something in a language House does not know, low and dark, and the horde of high-wall rats bursts into noise and motion and it isn't rats. It's a storm of black feathers, orange-glinting eyes, wings pushing cold cold air down on them, so low House can feel it in his hair, feel the wing-tips brushing his arm when he raises it to shield his face, and the touches are like sleet and then he can't see a damn thing because the lamp has gone out.

They sit there in the dark, no longer holding hands because they're holding onto each other, for a while. How long, no telling. Long enough for Wilson to regain his senses and find his lighter in his pocket. House can see the sparks shaking each time Wilson tries to get the thing to work.

He doesn't offer to help. He's in no better shape than Wilson.

* * *

Once the lantern's lit and they've both remembered how to breathe, House gets up.

His leg hurts, but he needs to move, and to see. Specifically, to see the wall where the crows, or whatever they were, seemed to gather.

He lights the candles so he won't leave Wilson in the dark, and takes the lantern over to the corner where everything seemed to start. He finds no windows, bricked-over or otherwise. No air vents. No trapdoors, no shelves, nothing. House steps forward, running his hands over the stone surface, and notices an odd sensation under the toe of his boot.

_Sand?_ he thinks. He leans down with his lamp, touches the stuff, and his fingers come up coated in ash. The same fine, gritty stuff he'd seen in the bird cages, in the attic, where whatever happened to Wilson, happened to Wilson.

House can't remember if the ash was here before. It must have been. It couldn't possibly ... but nothing that's happened tonight could really possibly have happened, and there must be an explanation for the shared delusions and he hopes there's not some kind of weird gas leak in here, a fissure in the ground filling the basement with CO2 or --

"House," Wilson says, but House is thinking. "House!"

House turns around to find Wilson standing at the base of the steps, their bags slung over his shoulder. "I want out of the basement," he says. "Now."

* * *

In a direct manifestation of Anticlimax Hell, nothing else happens the entire night. There are only routine noises -- the house settling as the air cools, a rustle of small animals in the grass outside, the crickets and frogs and an owl somewhere. Thunder rumbles, a tiger growl in the distance as they pace, talk very little, and keep each other company. There's no telling if the storms are truly gone, so they pull the dusty twin mattress out of the back bedroom, the one with the abandoned broken doll, which Wilson throws out the window into the darkness before he'll pick up his corner of the mattress.

House doesn't even mock him. Probably some kind of failure on his part, but if there's one thing he doesn't need, it's a fresh set of hallucinations involving Chucky's distant cousin out in Kansas. Or Nebraska. He's still not sure which state this is.

They drag the mattress into the front room, dust it off as best they can, and stretch out, if you can call it that. It's a twin size, barely enough room for the two of them to fit, but it's the only place to lie down at all and so they do, arranged closely together and wondering out loud if that faint scent is urine, or what.

They lie in the dark shoulder to shoulder on the narrow mattress. The smell that might be urine fades into the background. House can smell dust and the riper odor of rotting wood, but the strongest scent is the coppery tang of Wilson's blood. The bandage on his hand is soaked again and Wilson's fallen asleep with that hand on his chest.

House turns on his side, reaches across Wilson and takes hold of his hand. Light pressure that won't wake Wilson up, but it should help stop the bleeding. Tomorrow he'll look at it in good light and rig up a pressure bandage.

Wilson makes a small noise in his throat and House pushes up on one elbow. It's so dark he can't see Wilson's features, just the pale blur of his sweat-damp face.

It's like a flashback to the worst hours of Chemo Weekend, when he was damned near sure that Wilson was going to die on his sofa before morning, when all House could smell was stale vomit, piss, sweat and fear.

He wraps his arm tighter around Wilson and listens to the steady sound of his breathing for a long time.

When House dozes off, he dreams things that wake him again, and doesn't talk about it. The same thing happens to Wilson, House can tell, and so he doesn't ask. He already knows.

They sleep, and wake, and sleep again. They keep checking their watches, but one or both of them is no longer keeping accurate time; they know this because of the discrepancy between the two. It hardly matters which one is correct; it is still a long, long night on a stiff and ruined mattress, and the only thing the least bit comfortable here is the heat and heft of Wilson against his side, as the air keeps getting colder.

* * *

The moment it's light enough to see what they're doing, they are out the door. Wheeling the bikes (unharmed, though the garage lost most of its roof in the night) into the open, and packing their saddlebags, and looking over their shoulders.

"First hotel?" Wilson says.

"Or motel. Campground. Convenient rest stop. Whichever comes first."

"Preferably with food available."

By the time they're ready to ride, the sun's just coming up, a thin yellow sliver on the horizon.

The old Buick, some thirty yards from the house, is now on its back in the weeds.

To the left of the car, the windbreak is down. How none of the trees struck the old house, House doesn't care to speculate. Snapped-off trunks litter the area like scattered Lincoln logs, tossed across the land and the pavement. It'll be a bitch to maneuver their bikes around it, and they'll likely have to detour through the tall grass and smaller hunks of debris, but House figures anything that will get them further away from this place is worth the effort.

He swings his leg over, so tired and so sore.

A phone rings.

It's a shrill sound, an old-fashioned stuttering mechanical chime, and it's coming from inside the house. The blood drains from Wilson's face; he looks sick.

"Let's go, House," he says. "Come on."

But House sits still, looking back at the door. _What if_ , he thinks. What if I went back, and answered?

_Have to find it first_ , says something irrational in his head. Hide and seek, trick or treat.

"House," Wilson says, and his voice is low and urgent. "House, look."

He's pointing at the ancient pole a few yards behind and to the left of the house. It lists sideways, its service box busted open, its few frayed broken wires swaying in the fresh morning breeze. "We went through every room. You know we did. There is," Wilson says, _"no fucking phone."_

House looks at Wilson, Wilson looks at House, and the phone that can't ring keeps ringing.

They start their bikes without another word, and ride until the house is lost from sight.

 

**~ _Epilogue_ ~**

The diner is like every one of the other roadhouses they've stopped at over the past months -- the smell of fried grease heavy in the air, an industrial-size Bunn coffeemaker behind the counter, the sizzle of eggs and bacon on the grill. House feels right at home. Of course, it's Wilson who wants to talk.

"House, what we saw, last night ... "

"Birds?"

Wilson hesitates, stirring his coffee with his left hand. His right is wrapped in a light gauze bandage, fresh from the Walgreen's next door. A _clean_ gauze bandage; the cut had apparently stopped bleeding somewhere on the road.

"Birds," he says. "Yeah. Big ones, a lot of them."

"Yeah." House steals the biggest, ripest strawberry from the top of Wilson's waffle stack. "I like that idea you and what's-his-name had. Jason. The one where you never talked about it."

Wilson opens his mouth like he's going to say something else, but then he closes it and gives a short, sharp nod.

"Works for me," he says.

And then they change the subject. How a flock -- no, a _murder_ of crows -- could possibly get into the sealed basement and back out again is not something House wants to think about right now. _I think "impossibility" is the word you want_ , House's brain informs him. He tells it to shut up, and swipes a second strawberry. 

They linger over their breakfast, refilling their coffees until they both know they'll have to pull over by the side of a road somewhere.

By the time they stagger outside, overfed, overtired, and squinting into the sunlight, House has almost stopped trying to figure out whether a combo of stress, radon gas, and Moon Pies could somehow cause mutually simultaneous multi-sensory hallucinations, and what it means if the answer is no, it couldn't.

And that's when they round the corner of the diner and see the crow there.

* * *

It's a crow like any other crow, _Corvus brachyrhynchos_ , House's mind helpfully pipes up, and nothing at all like the golden-eyed _things_ from last night. Yet the sight of it brings him to a dead stop.

The crow sits on House's bike and looks at them.

"Shoo," House says, and waves his arms.

The crow cocks its head.

"Shoo!" House says, more loudly. "Get out of here!" He starts toward it, only to be stopped by Wilson's hand on his arm.

"Don't," Wilson says.

"Wilson," House says. "It's just a crow."

Wilson's grip doesn't loosen. "Are you sure?" he says, and his voice is low and he's actually _serious_ about this.

House looks from him to the crow. _"Grawk!"_ the crow says.

"Give him something," Wilson says.

"Wilson -- "

_"Give him something."_

"Fine," House grumbles. "Fine. What have you got?"

"You're the one with the loose change," Wilson says, and House sighs. He digs in his jeans pocket, holds up the Mercury dime. The silver coin shines in the sunlight, and House flips it in the air, away from the crow, away from their bikes, and watches it sail through the air and land with a muffled _ting!_ on the asphalt.

_"Grawk!"_ the crow says again, and flutters from the bike to the ground, where it scoops up the dime in its beak, spreads its wings and flies away.

"That coin," House says, "was worth thousands of dollars. And you made me give it to a crow." He puts his helmet on. "I'm going to remind you of this when we're both old and dying in a gutter somewhere."

"Unless it was a 1916D, brilliant uncirculated with full bands, it was worth about three bucks."

House stares at him. Wilson grimaces and waves his hands in that particularly _Wilsonian_ way of his.

"My dad," he says. "Coin collection. We weren't allowed to touch it." 

"You weren't allowed to touch much of anything, were you?" House swings his leg over, surprised at suddenly how little it hurts just now. "Let me guess -- plastic on the furniture?"

Wilson's fishing out his keys, looking at those more than at House. "Only in the living room."

"You do realize that's still weird, right?"

"Shut up," Wilson huffs, getting on his bike. "Let's go find somewhere to sleep."

Whatever comeback House might have had is lost in the engine noise, so he just follows Wilson out onto the road. For a half second, his left-hand mirror reflects the top of the diner's power pole. The crow is up there, watching, like it's waiting for him to turn around. 

"Not this time," House mutters. 

He throttles up to a higher gear and aims the bike east.

 

~ fin 

 


End file.
